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One reason why community forms of production have not received as much attention as traditional capitalist forms is their inability to resolve problems of power, authority and governance.

With ethnographic research, the authors showed how a production community designed a governance system that incorporates a constitutionally endowed basis of authority with democratic mechanisms to ensure control by the majority, with shifting conceptions of authority and meritocracy over time.

Relatively little is known about the process of organizing in communities – how social groups accomplish the critical task of coordinating the actions of multiple individuals to achieve important outcomes.

The research takes a step toward filling this gap by examining how a social group designs a shared basis of authority and thus, a governance system.

The authors' examination of the emergence of a governance system in an open source software community shows how a community uses a formal bureaucratic basis of authority to reinforce the community’s meritocratic norms.

However, this approach depends upon democratic mechanisms that not only limit that basis of authority, but allows the system to adapt with members’ changing interpretation of leadership.

The authors find that while technical proficiency is an important criteria for leadership in such a group, it is not sufficient. Despite espoused preferences for ‘hands-off leaders,’ skill in building the organization becomes increasingly important over time.

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